The Network aims to improve peace, security and democratic development in the Region of the South Caucasus via young women’s increased participation in peace and security policy analysis and planning. We are here to open up a discourse on peace and security and women's participation in Regional developments.

вторник, 21 октября 2014 г.

For the 29th day, Linda Wilson
came to the gates of the Ebola treatment center looking for her best friend,
the woman whose picture she carried in her purse, so she could show it to
guards or nurses or anyone else who might be able to help.

“Have you seen her?” Wilson
asked them.

For the 29th day, the answer
was no. Barbara Bai’s name was not on any list, even though she was admitted to
a hospital one month earlier. There was no record of her death or her survival
at any hospital in Monrovia. She was one of the many people who have simply
vanished as Ebola tears through the city.

Ebola ravaged this capital so
quickly that some patients passed through an already broken medical system with
hardly any paper trail. Others were admitted to one clinic and transferred to
another without notice. Hundreds were cremated long before their families were
notified that they had died.

The world has heard about the
deaths. Ebola has claimed 2,500 lives in this country, most of them in
Monrovia. But the epidemic has also left in its trail another form of grief and
anguish for those whose friends and relatives are missing. About 30 percent of
Ebola victims survive. That’s the number many here obsess over — it is just
high enough to offer hope and to fuel uncertainty.

Their vigil is a reflection of
a medical system so overwhelmed by the virus that it has lost track of both the
living and the dead. The United States and other foreign donors are working
with the Liberian government to improve its system of medical records. Some
clinics and hospitals have started posting more accurate lists of the deceased
on their front walls, where families now gather, collapsing into tears as soon
as the names appear.

But many are left without even
a hint of their loved ones’ whereabouts.

“I’m left without any
knowledge,” Wilson said as she walked away from Island Clinic, a fortified
Ebola treatment center.

Relatives and friends spend
hours each day outside the city’s four Ebola clinics. Some come to pray. Many
are not sure if they’re in the right place.

They wait for visiting hours,
held in special partitioned spaces, even though the loved ones they are looking
for never show up. They check patient lists, even though they’re almost always
incomplete. They ask nurses for help, even though the requests usually don’t
yield information.

After almost a month, Wilson,
36, knew that the chances of Bai’s survival were slim. But without any
confirmation, she kept imagining her friend walking out of the gates of a
treatment center, sprung back to life as if she had never been ill.

Speaking with the families of
the missing has become a second job for hospital employees at Island Clinic — a
product of their rare access to the isolation ward.

Last week, Prince Nyumah
approached one employee after the next with a picture of his sister, one that
showed her wearing a wide smile and a big turquoise necklace. She was dropped
off at the clinic three days earlier. She had been sharing an apartment with a
woman who died of Ebola.

Nyumah looked reassured. He
walked to a group of other family members to share the news.

But the truth was that the
hygienist, who declined to give his name, wasn’t sure. When a desperate family
confronts him, he sometimes feels forced to lie, to say their relatives are
fine, even if they aren’t.

“I don’t want to be the one to
tell them that bad news,” he said.

Wilson dropped off Bai at
Redemption Hospital in mid-September, when it was overflowing with patients and
littered with dead bodies. She wasn’t sure if her friend had Ebola, but Bai’s
fever and vomiting had worsened, and the hospital’s doctors said she should
remain there for observation.

Wilson took Bai’s daughter, a
17-year-old named Grace, to live with her.

A few days later, Wilson got a
call from a friend who worked at Redemption. Many of the patients had been
transferred, including Bai, but he wasn’t sure where. Wilson got in her car. It
was the first day of her quest to find her friend.

A world apart

The streets are still crowded
in Monrovia. The markets are still full of men hawking bootleg DVDs, and women
selling fruit and bags of rice. Almost everywhere, music blasts from car
radios. After sunset, joggers run along a street near the beach.

The city’s four Ebola treatment
centers are a world away. Each is fenced off and tightly secured. When
relatives arrive, they’re asked to wait outside with other families. They watch
men and women in full-coverage “moon suits” through the fencing, sometimes
shouting questions to them.

When survivors are released,
looking disoriented and lethargic, the crowd outside scans for the familiar
face of a loved one. When families hear that their relatives have died, the
wailing is immediate and seems to come from all directions.

Wilson divided her time between
the city’s clinics in her search for Bai, whose husband had abandoned her
before Ebola swept through Liberia. She wore a beige cap to protect herself
from the sun during the hours she spent outside waiting.

Wilson has high cheekbones, big
brown eyes and a girlish voice. She met Bai in church when they were teenagers.
Wilson sang alto in the choir, and Bai sang soprano. For a few years, they
lived together. They started introducing each other as sisters.

Bai, 36, got sick just as
Liberia’s medical system was overwhelmed with Ebola patients. Redemption
Hospital was not equipped to treat the disease, so it became a holding center
for those like Bai, until their test results came back. If they were positive,
the patients were sent to one of the four Ebola treatment centers.

“But which one?” Wilson kept
asking.

No one knew. Unless a patient
is healthy enough to make a call on a borrowed phone or to wave at relatives
from a partitioned visitation center, it’s almost impossible to know whether
she’s alive or dead. Wilson returned home each day and cried in her closet, so
Bai’s daughter wouldn’t hear.

No final answers

Nyumah got the call a few days
ago from a contact at the hospital. His sister’s bed was suddenly empty.

He raced to Island Clinic and
asked everyone he could find what had happened. No one knew.

He found a member of the
body-collection team, responsible for handling the dead, and asked him to look
for his sister among the body bags he was carrying away for cremation — a
disposal practice now mandated by the state.

The team member never got back
to him, but soon a pickup truck loaded with the bodies pulled up, and tears
formed in Nyumah’s eyes. He took a picture of the pile of bags. Days later, he
still wasn’t sure if his sister was in one of them.

Wilson’s call came late on the
34th day of her search. A nurse at Island Clinic had done some research and
found out that Bai had died. He couldn’t say when, only that her body had been
taken to the crematorium. The bodies are burned at night in a compound outside
the city.

Wilson started crying. She was
glad for the certainty after so much time spent peering through fences, looking
for a woman who might have died weeks earlier. But the news was still
paralyzing.

She’s heard talk about a big
ceremony planned to commemorate all of Liberia’s Ebola victims. But it won’t
take place until the disease fades away, a point in the future that is hard to
imagine in Monrovia now.

What kind of memorial could she
offer Bai in the meantime? With no body and few facts about the death, it was
hard to think of anything.

“I can just say that she was my
friend, she was my sister,” she said. “And I’ve got to try to move on.”

Facts from History

CEDAW

UNSCR 1325

Strategy for engagement and joint actions on confidence building and P2P diplomacy that involve women. Final Report

YOUTH PEACE PLAN OF GEORGIA

This publication is produced within the framework of the project - ‘‘Support Democratic Participation of Young Women in Building Peace and Stability in Georgia’’ implemented in Georgia by International Network for Civil Development - INCD in partnership with Young Women Experts’ Network for Peace and Security (YWEPS) and with the financial support of the Embassy of Canada through Fund for Local Initiatives (CFLI).